Addis Fortune (Addis Ababa)
Wudineh Zenebe
17 September 2007
Addis Ababa — The Lease Board of the Addis Abeba City Caretaker Administration this week will decide whether the 50 plots designated for the construction of hotel complexes should be leased to investors through bid or negotiation.
The Board is expected to discuss the criteria with which investors will be granted the plots and set a pace they should be putting on the work evaluating their capacities.
The Prime Minister's Office ordered the City Administration to prepare plots suitable for the construction of 50 hotels and the latter has discerned the plots.
A letter sent to the City Administration signed by Berhanu Adelo, head of the PM's Office, stipulated that vast plots belonging to public agencies should be identified and taken over so that they would be used to curb the shortage of hotels in the city. Sources at the Addis Abeba Land Development and Administration Authority (AALDAA) told Fortune that, in accordance with the letter, engineers of the Authority have chosen the 50 plots.
Twenty plots parcelled for the first phase of the project are already identified; the plots include extra spaces in the premises of the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MoME), located off the road from Megenagna to CMC, Quality and Standards Authority (QSAE), the Civil Aviation Authority on South Africa Street and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD) in Kazanchis.
The hotel expansion project will be undertaken in two phases; 15 to 20 houses in the first phase and the balance in the second phase. The government focused on holdings of its agencies in the first phase of the projects as it will not require evictions and compensation payments, for it will be held on plots secured from state agencies.
The second phase of the project, which will be carried out in shanty villages that need renewal, requires compensation payment.
An investor would be given 3,000sqm to 5,000sqm of plot as long as he has the capacity to erect a three-star and above hotel, sources disclosed.
A Lease Board official told Fortune that the transferring would be made once the Board makes a decision on how the process.
The metropolis has under 5,000 bedrooms in its various hotels that are up to the required standards where it should have had 10,000, according to a study by the Ministry of Works and Urban Development (MoWUD). Though there are around 200 hotels in the city, those that meet the standard are below 100.
Arkebe Oqubay, state minister of MoWUD, had told Fortune two weeks ago that the government has envisaged alleviating the city's stark shortage of good quality hotels.
After a decision is made on the terms of the transfer, the plots will totally be granted to private investors; local and foreign investors and those that visit the country for the Millennium.
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